Beeing a free spirit. Beeing free. Beeing fit.

[Claudius]

This is meant to be a philosphical/spiritual post.

what is "to be fit" ?

We could talk about here, not on facebook.

just a few words.

Athletes tend to have a different perception of themselfs, they are chalenging themselfs, they also have to care about recovery. Here we have this dualism we are finding so often, also in philosophy, take Nietzsche: Dionysus vs. Apollo. Take Christanity: good and evil. And so on...

[Claudius]

forget about that fb group, if there ever will be a discussion, then we do it here

[Claudius]

I just wanted to have some answers from some real athletes, i love your quote Peter: Athletes row, others just play games

[alien878]

Speaking of dualism, I had a coach that used to tell us “It’s all fun and games until someone gets it in the eye. Then it’s a sport”.

[Claudius]

“It’s all fun and games until someone gets it in the eye. Then it’s a sport”.

Yes, and you can make out of this a concept, too.

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[Claudius]

I started this conversation here to bring up some fresh air. Because of our recent conversation "is anybody out there". Be as limitless, as free you want to be. Just be brave and run with a thought experiment. It can lead us into any direction.

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[Draggon]

what is "to be fit" ?
...
Athletes tend to have a different perception of themselfs, they are chalenging themselfs, they also have to care about recovery.

One thing I've noticed as I age is that "being fit" changes over time. As a young man, I thought being fit was getting as muscle-y as I could with my body-building and strength training. These days (closing in on 57), I'm of a mind that "being fit" is simply being as active and healthy as I desire to be and hopefully still being able to do the things I want to do without hurting myself too badly...

Most of my fitness training has taken on an aerobic quality vs the anaerobic weightlifting that I used to do a lot of. Now my weight-training sessions are short and my rowing/cycling/hiking sessions are long.

[Claudius]

I had to smile about that bodybuilding thing, I was in it,too, as a Teenie, Arnie the big hero, more muscles you want?

"being fit" is simply being as active and healthy as I desire to be and hopefully still being able to do the things I want to do without hurting myself too badly...

This is good, by elaborating this, one can say, beeing fit is a feeling, which derives if ones ideals and the given reality match. The difficulty in this equation is that most of us are not fully aware of one's ideals and reality. One simply represses the ideal or reality, in most cases both of them, or due to a sudden change in life, maybe an accident or injury, reality changes, the dams of ideal and reality breaches. In a fantasy way this marks here the descent into the Underworld. I have learned to forget about those ideals, to enjoy every ride,run and row workout, every hike and swim unit, be thankful for every cold air intake in a xc skiing or winter walk. You do not knows what comes tomorrow.


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[JonT]

This is exactly why I am not a philosopher, although technically I am a Doctor of Philosophy, which always struck me as odd for a mathematician and computer scientist! But philosophy is hard and I have never become familiar with the frameworks and models. Anyway......here is a bit of a ramble, in the spirit of not overthinking with the result that I end up writing nothing.

For me being fit is not being unfit. Being unfit for me would be to be unable to do the types of physical activities that I wish to do - "that looks like a nice mountain, I will walk up it without a near-death experience".

Somehow, in my mind there is a relative scale which I would not actually be able to define. This would range from unfit->fit->very fit. I used to strive for "very fit", always competing with someone or something, pushing myself extremely hard, and wanting to be far "fitter" than the majority of the population. This is only a few years ago. Now I am much more relaxed and my definition of "fit" has changed to more of a mental state of "not worrying about whether I should be doing more exercise and being more active". If I am exercising regularly, and in a meaningful way then I would consider myself as "fit" in some sense.

There is also a link for me between physical and mental fitness. I definitely feel far more "blue" when I am not exercising 4-6 times each week. I forget about this and wonder why I am feeling a bit glum, and then I do a workout and remember about the link.

I also think there was a link between fitness and being able to compete in the recent past. I would definitely have linked how fit I was to how I was doing in terms of SB/PB performance and also in events like IRL, CTC and Nonathlon. I am far less worried about this now, and so my definition of "fit" has also probably changed. In previous years I would have easily said "my Nonathlon scores are below 900, I am losing fitness". Now I can't imagine saying anything like that....well, I don't think I can anyway.

End of ramble.

Jon

[Iain]

Strange, from the title I assumed that this was something connected to Ian Bee, perhaps what could possibly drive someone to do multiple HMs without even the encouragement of the Crazy Bear Challenge! Not to denigrate it, I admire it, I just know that unless HMs get a lot more pleasant I couldn't face the repeat tooo often without some externa encouragement. Perhaps that puts me closer to Jon's previous state. For me the encouragement is just to challenge myself, somehow seeing the numbers get better lift my spirits in a way that makes no sense.

So what is fitness to me? Well, fittingly for a philosophical discussion I would say it depends on context. In the Indoor rowing community what is normally considered as fit is mediocre. How often does someone who finds out that I use a Concept2 regularly do they appear completely confused when I talk about "rowing" for > 15 mins. That isn't a fair benchmark however as "rowing slowly" is equally bemusing to them. But before I came to the Concept2 Forum, I was in awe of the rowers in my College First Boat who each recorded their distances for a 20 min row each week. I used the erg, but never rowed continuously for >2k and couldn't contemplate rowing at >2 min pace. I had started rowing in the gym I had joined and initially rowed until my instantaneous pace dropped to 2:00. But I digress and am in danger of annoying the Forumpolice (sorry). This is not limited to indoor rowing however. Looking at my son's friends, any that could comfortably run a couple of miles I would probably grade "quite fit", but looking at his football team, any that are not able to keep their pace up for 60 min of an ordinary paced game I think of as "unfit". So I think that this ios a relative term that means that someone has the fitness required to perform a normal level of activity for that group without undue stress.

Bizarrely this definition means that sometimes I am fit (as a middle aged accountant) but not fit as an indoor rower. Even more strangely, I would say that for most of my FS membership I would have said that I was not fit as an FS member, but now that we have aged and lost many of our fitter participants, I feel closer to meeting the threshold of "reasonable" fitness now than when I set my 2k PB.

Interested about the thread title (to go full circle), Being Free (and as someone who spent some time studying Heidegger I will not be drawn to the multiple meanings of "being" in English) is in my opinion a state of mind. It is an absence of being aware of an undue restriction applying. I find it interesting that I can only define it in the negative, but in my experience a single restriction that a person is aware of and impedes what they want to do stops them being "Free" even if they have free choices in all other areas that are normally considered. So someone who is obliged to work when others aren't won't feel free even if in a state that gives them freedom to choose even walking away from the responsibilities / employment that requires that work.

Well congratulations for anyone who has stuck with me so far, I won't impede your freedom any further.

Iain